Talk About Torture
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: Johnny tries the 'nod and smile' approach with his sister after she reveals what happened the previous day with Reed. SueReed and siblingness. Dedicated to ToxicBettle


"I can't believe you made him do that," Johnny groaned sympathetically. "Talk about torture."

Sue just shrugged innocently. "It was his own fault," she pointed out.

Her brother raised an eyebrow at her. "How could it possibly be his own fault?" he asked her.

"He asked me if I was playing on the illness and making it seem worse than it really was just because things have been crazy for a while," Sue explained.

"Still," Johnny shook his head, joining her at the kitchen table and sitting down on the opposite side of her. "You didn't have to make him do that."

"Didn't I?"

"Well, telling him that he can decide whether or not you're faking things after he's taken care of you for a day isn't really fair," he explained.

"Why not?" Sue asked.

"Because it's Reed, and you know that he'd have done it if you'd just asked him nicely rather than made it an unavoidable situation for him."

Of course, Johnny had a point, but Sue still felt like Reed had brought it on himself. "Women use this all the time, Johnny. Either men learn the hard way or they admit that they're too much of a chicken to take care of a woman for a day."

Johnny frowned. "No woman ever did that to me," he realised.

"That's because you never stick around long enough for them to try it."

He half-laughed at this. "Ouch, way to hit below the belt, sis."

"Sorry," she cringed, reaching over and patting the top of his hand. "But it is true."

"Yeah, I suppose it is," he agreed after a moment. "So, what did he do when he was taking care of you?"

Sue smiled to herself over her coffee. "He did just that, he took care of me."

"Well, how?"

She grinned further. "In the morning he brought me a cup of tea, said that coffee wouldn't help me feel any better and that tea would do the world of good. Then he made me breakfast and sat with me in bed for a while so that I wasn't wallowing in self pity on my own. We watched old re-runs together, and that was great. Then he made me lunch, and we sat outside to eat together to get some fresh air. When I got tired he held me until I fell asleep, and as he was there when I woke up I guess he must have stayed there for the whole two hours. Then we had dinner together, and he stayed with me until I fell asleep again last night."

Johnny took a moment to process this information, and then nodded slowly. "That guy is so going to be my brother-in-law one day," he murmered under his breath. However, it wasn't quite quiet enough to escape his sister's notice.

"What?" she asked.

"I said-"

"I heard exactly what you said," she cut him off. "Johnny, you promised you'd drop this whole act of trying to get us back together!"

"That's only because you were clearly going to do the job yourself," he defended, "and after yesterday, you've convinced me of that. Marriage and babies for you two, Susie."

She frowned at him. "I am not in love with him."

"Sure," he said, clearly not believing him.

"I'm not."

"Okay."

"...no matter how well he proves that he can take care of a sick person."

"I know."

"...or how well he knows me."

"Yeah, there's that as well."

"...or how alike we are sometimes."

"Okay,"

"...or how domesticaed we're going to be when we take care of Joseph on Friday." The look on Sue's face as she remebered the babysitting that her and Reed had been recruited for when the rest of the team were disappearing for various reasons. "Oh god," she groaned. "I'm doomed."

Johnny just laughed at this, earning another glare from his sister.

"You just laugh, that's fine," she told him. "But I'm the one who has to spend a whole day with Reed and a one-year-old. God, we're going to be changing nappies, putting him down for a nap, taking him to the park, doing his lunch...I might as well give up now and start arranging the wedding."

"Yeah," Johnny nodded.

"But if I do that then some of the reporters will no doubt get wind of it, and Reed and I turning up together at the Services to the City award party next week might make half the fans wet themselves," she realised.

"Absoluetly," Johnny nodded again.

She looked at her brother, who was clearly just following her with the 'nod and smile' technique. She hated when he did this. He had a knack for getting her started on something, and rather than talking her into it, he'd sit back and allow her to ramble until she talked herself into the idea, eventually admitting everything that he wanted her to.

"Why am I even saying this to you?" she asked herself, when she realised what he was doing. "You're too far gone into this whole 'Reed and I are meant for each other' thing for me to make an impression you now."

He just nodded again. "Uh-huh."

Sue huffed, and got up from her seat, leaving the kitchen with coffee in hand. Johnny grinned, knowing that he'd come out of the almost-one-sided discussion with the upper hand, and that she was just leaving before she admitted everything and had him blackmailing her with threats to tell Reed what she'd said.

"She totally loves him," he said to himself.

The only problem was that she clearly wasn't going to be the one who made the first move.

The solution, however, presented itself when Reed came into the kitchen, no doubt in need of a coffee refill. A lightbulb sparked into life in Johnny's head, and he turned in his chair to face Reed. Perhaps he just needed to push things a little harder...

"You know," he started, attracting Reed's attention so that he could start the whole game all over again. "I still can't believe she made you do that yesterday," he said, with the same sympathetic tone he had done with Sue. "I mean, talk about torture..."


End file.
